


Feels Like Flying

by onyourleft084



Series: Time after Time [1]
Category: Brave (2012), How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: Dreams, F/M, Merricup AU, Modern AU, Past life, Psychometry, because we seriously need more of that, it's the ol' Reincarnation AU, merida and hiccup are seriously meant to be together, merricup - Freeform, remembering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-24
Updated: 2015-03-24
Packaged: 2018-03-19 09:17:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3604704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onyourleft084/pseuds/onyourleft084
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jumping aboard the ol' Reincarnation AU prompt! In which Hiccup is an aircraft engineer with puzzling dreams and Merida's a grocery store cashier with vague, lofty aspirations. A chance encounter, a touch of the hand, and they're suddenly reminded of who they were-- and what they mean to each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Feels Like Flying

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first in a series. A couple things I'll be stating to get straight:
> 
> In-story, of course, the reincarnated characters don't have the same names as their past lives, but I will still continue to refer to them as such because...really, I can't think of modern AU names, and they end up remember their old ones anyway, so there.
> 
> The memories of their past lives can only be triggered by direct physical contact of any kind, a kind of psychometry if you will. 
> 
> Happy reading :)

Hiccup has that flying dream again.

When most people dream about flying, they have this sensation of being weightless. Not Hiccup. In his flying dreams, he's riding a great black beast, a dragon with one red tail fin, and the wind is in his hair and the sunlight is caught in the choppy of waves of a vast ocean below. It's adrenaline, it's power, it's a mad rush of reckless and breathless delight through clouds and fog, and it always seems so real that Hiccup has a hard time distinguishing, moments after he wakes up, whether it was a dream or it actually happened.

It feels like it actually happened, a very long time ago.

Ever since he was a kid he'd been having these recurring dreams. Two things are constant about them: flying the black dragon, which to him seems closer and more dear than most of his friends in real life, and a figure who only appears when he lands.

It's a girl in a blue dress and she's beautiful. He can remember her curly red hair and bright blue eyes, and sometimes, if his sleep is really deep, he can catch the faintest trace of her laugh. Sometimes he feels the ghost of her hand in his, and every time she smiles, always at the end of this dream, it looks more lovely and familiar than any other smile he's ever seen in his waking hours.

All these things feel like memories that Hiccup is trying, in his dreams, to recall, but the girl's face and the dragon's roar fade away once his day begins. Once the alarm clock goes off and it's off to work designing aircraft and engines, but never getting to fly them.

Hiccup likes his job, partially because of the 'zone' he gets when he's lost himself in sketches, plots, figures and calculations, aerodynamic jargon and diagrams. They seem like home, familiar somehow, and he hates wrapping it up and facing the world (a world he doesn't completely understand, despite having survived it into adulthood) once again. But he also dislikes it because every new design reminds him that he's so close and yet so far. A man who creates instruments of flight, but not qualified-- by simple virtue of imperfect eyesight-- to ever use them.

It's frustrating, but like the dreams he has, Hiccup learns to put it in the back of his mind. He does so now, as he makes a quick stop to the grocery on the way home.

 

\---  
Merida's pretty sure she hasn't always been this way.

She pushes dark red curls back from her forehead (some of them just won't stay in a ponytail, will they?) straightens her name tag-- bearing a name that never really felt like hers-- and forces a smile at the next costumer. "Good evening, ma'am!"

She's working the express lane tonight, which is probably the most aggressive of all grocery check-out lanes known to man because of everybody in a rush trying to get home with their small number of supplies. Not the third guy in the line, though. He's got his head in the clouds, floppy dark brown hair hanging over thick-rimmed eyeglasses, looking at just about everything except the line moving in front of him. There's scruff along his jaw and his coat has a coffee stain on it, but something draws Merida's attention to him, momentarily, and she starts to feel like she's seen him before, like she's _known_ him before.

Then gravity pulls her sharply back to the present. The present in which she is a humble grocery cashier with an uncalled-for sense of entitlement, because really, Merida doesn't think she's cut out to be doing this.

No, her mind's always on bigger, grander things.

The guy with the glasses, the uncannily familiar guy, the actually-kinda-cute-in-a-geeky-sort-of-way guy, draws closer. She smiles at him (standard procedure for all employees at this place), and he blinks for a second before scattering his stuff on the counter. Microwave popcorn, a pack of razor blades, organic eggs, sesame oil. Merida works swiftly, packing them into a brown paper bag and punching out the receipt.

Glasses guy continues to look at her-- not dumbly anymore, but examining her like she's a bug under a microscope, or a miraculous phenomenon of science that hasn't happened in a hundred, maybe a thousand, years.

"Thank you for shopping," she rattles out automatically, and as she hands him his change, her fingers land in his palm.

And his skin sparks against hers, and in her head it's all white light, like a magnesium flare, and she catches her breath as the visions come. Cliff tops, lush forests, stone walls. The strain in her shoulders and back as she lifts a great wooden bow and fires arrows into the sunset. The distant strum of a Celtic lute. And a boy on a great black beast, a dragon with one red tail fin.Tall and brunette and charming with an awkward grin. She remembers holding him. She remembers kissing him--

It all happens in a span of a few seconds, and when the customer pulls his hand away, their surroundings return. Their eyes meet.

Merida's breath catches. She knows where she's seen him before.

"Hiccup?" The word spills out of her mouth before she can even think. And oddly enough, she says it like it's a name, not just a word. Because it is. It's his name-- at least, the one she knows him by.

Hiccup blinks. "Merida." It's not the name on her tag, but it echoes deep within her bones. Yes, she's been called that before, and now she remembers when.

Time seems to freeze.

She leans back, the apprehension and fear and confusion and desperation clear in her blue eyes. But he knows she knows. It's all he can do to keep himself from reaching out to her.

"You remember," Hiccup breathes.

"I--" Merida glances at the customers lining up behind Hiccup, and it reminds her that the present is still happening. She forces herself to act quickly.

"I get off in two hours," she mutters to him quietly. "Meet me at the frozen yoghurt shop outside."

"Which one?" He manages to stammer.

"There's only one-- Arendelle's," Merida says. "I'll come to you. Just wait. Please."

Every vague little thing that Hiccup has ever tried to remember about his dreams is reflected in her, in his princess, because that's exactly what she is, he remembers now. Their old names and the kingdoms they came from, and almost an entire lifetime's worth of memories between them. The Viking and the princess.

Hiccup manages a nod. "Okay."

 

\---

Waiting at the yoghurt place as the hours tick by makes Hiccup antsy. He paces, back and forth, and as he walks, more memories just come flicking in. And there are a lot of them. He can't exactly remember the order they came in, but he remembers doing great things in that life. Things he never thought himself capable in this one.

Would Merida, in this new life, love him the same way even if he had never done anything that could quite compare to his old adventures?

Hiccup remembers joy and elation, and love, and loss. Losing a father. Losing Merida. But now, unbelievably, he's got her back, and the reason why-- why they met, why they suddenly remember, are all questions he would like asked, but not more than the one that pounds deep in his heart.

_Does she still love me?_

He remembered loving her. More than anything.

Hell, he still does.

The door opens, and Merida comes in. Her hair, still red and curly, held back by an unruly ponytail. Her lips tremble.

"Merida," Hiccup says softly, and he remembers whispering it in a stone-walled throne room while slipping an engagement ring on her finger.

"I'm sorry I took so long," she says.

She means it. She really does.

He takes a step closer. "I can't believe it. It's really you."

"I remember it all." Merida says. "More memories came back. I had you, didn't I? Then I lost you. God, Hic--"

Before she can start crying he's wrapped his arms around her, holding her tight, and it feels so much like home that Hiccup's scared his legs are going to give way. This, _this,_ is exactly where he belongs.

"Is this okay?" he says softly, running his fingers tentatively through her hair. She nods, sniffing.

"It's okay. We aren't strangers. We know each other." She tilts her face toward his, hands on his shoulders, mouth lifting in a smile of relief and joy. "I just met you and realized how much I missed you."

Hiccup chuckles softly. "This is fucking insane."

That's when she kisses him, and the kiss tastes like firelight and biting wind, like whispered promises and fall leaves. It tastes of adventure and wonder and joy and magic. It's everything Hiccup's ever wanted, it's everything Merida can't believe she deserves.

Hiccup pulls away, but tugs on her hand. "Come home with me. Please."

He's asking her to turn her back on their mundane lives and jump with him into their old, exciting one, even if only in memory. She says yes.

 

\---  
Rain falls, and they're lying together on Hiccup's couch. They've pieced it all together now. DunBroch and Berk, two strange nations allied by a princess and a chief who couldn't help but fall head over heels for each other. They help each other remember the fuzzy details. Even the painful ones.

They'd been engaged two weeks when Hiccup was lost in a storm flying his dragon, his Toothless, now a fond and glowing memory deep in Hiccup's heart. And Merida grew reckless in her grief, riding far away from home. She climbed up a cliff hoping he would meet her there like he promised. She fell. Her brothers found her body, brought her home. Their kingdom's healers couldn't save her.

"I was broken then, and I think I've felt broken my whole life," Merida says softly against Hiccup's chest. "I'm better now."

He plants a kiss on top of her head. "Yeah. Me too, princess. Me too."

Holding her, he thinks as they drift off into sleep, feels like flying.

 

 

 


End file.
